The Bidens by Ben Schreckinger

Author:Ben Schreckinger [Schreckinger, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2021-09-21T06:00:00+00:00

Vice Presidential Perks

While Joe had always been among the least wealthy members of the Senate, the vice presidency only heightened the contrast between the trappings of his day job and the realities of his home life. Over the years, Joe had borrowed to buy his lakeside house, cosigned on Beau’s and Hunter’s student loans, and taken out several other loans from financial institutions.513 He entered the vice presidency with six figures in debt.514

Joe’s new salary of $227,000515 would not radically alter his financial situation, but the vice presidency did come with a number of official perks, like living at the Naval Observatory. The lush, seventy-two-acre complex sits on Embassy Row, in a leafy part of the capital north of Georgetown. The vice president’s residence, a handsome nine-thousand-square-foot house in the Queen Anne style, boasts a library and sunroom.516 It included a staff, with their own basement quarters, to attend to the Bidens and prepare their meals in an industrial kitchen that could provide for a small army.517 Joe and Jill outfitted one room in the residence with bunk beds to facilitate their grandkids’ frequent sleepovers,518 and decorated the walls with the grandkids’ art.

There was also a secure hideaway locked behind by a fortified steel door that Joe gabbed about at the first Gridiron Dinner, an elite annual gathering of politicians and DC journalists of the Obama era. The disclosure led to a round of headlines suggesting Joe might have disclosed classified information, a charge his office denied.519

For her part, Jill continued to hold down a day job, switching from Delaware Technical Community College to Northern Virginia Community College. In her own, unassuming way, this made Jill a trailblazer. She was the first second lady in U.S. history to work full-time while her husband was in office.520

Many of her students, most of whom were foreign-born, showed no sign of recognizing their professor’s out-of-classroom importance. Her Secret Service entourage skewed young and blended in with the student population. Once, when an older student whispered to her, “I know who you are, and no one else here does,” Jill shot back, “That’s right. And we’re gonna keep it that way.”521 Another time, she let students who recognized her last name believe that she was Joe’s cousin.

In her other life, Dr. Jill held down a six-person staff and a corner office in the Old Executive Office Building,522 but she and Joe were both determined to maintain some semblance of normalcy.

To keep a lower profile during his return visits to his sleepy home state, Joe ordered that his typical motorcade of fifteen or more vehicles be cut down to two, with the other vehicles trailing by at least a mile. The policy prompted grousing from Secret Service agents who believed it put too much distance between Joe and his military aide carrying the nuclear football. Agents were nonplussed as well by the frequency with which they had to scramble to accommodate impromptu trips to Delaware.

Female agents took exception to one of the vice president’s more unconventional personal habits.

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